Looking up from the girl, Zhao Wei found himself surrounded by a lot of people. He couldn't help but become a little cautious. After all, as far as he'd been here, any time he'd met a large group of people, it was always with the intent to capture or kill him, or both.
One person placed a small basket of bread in front of him before bowing to him and thanking him. Another person came forward with a small pouch of salt before doing the same. Similarly other's began to move forward, some passing the meat they were allotted to him.
The food was dry, meager, and probably quite old. But he knew about their lives, most of them weren't working the jobs they did when the kingdom was still intact, even if they did it would just be volunteer work as nobody earned anything to pay them with. All this food they passed him was a part of all they had left after everything was torn down. It looked small but it might as well have been the world to them.
Zhao Wei was stunned and could only give an awkward smile and thank them back for their offering. He was touched really, but he didn't feel good about taking it from them, but he couldn't refuse their sincerity afraid he would offend them. Instead he asked them to gather here in the night so he could get to know them better.
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Going to the public shower, he washed himself down, scrubbing himself profusely to break off an inch thick layer of dried snake blood. He felt incomparably light as at least tens of kilograms were dropped off his body. The snake blood was extremely dense despite it's liquid state, almost like mercury.
The hardest part was trying to wash his hair and beard. He hadn't touched them at all causing his hair to go below his shoulders and his beard to tickle his chest. The dried blood almost cemented it together making the process extremely painful for him, it would've probably been easier to pull his hair off his scalp.
After an hour of trying he decided it wasn't worth the trouble, picking up a knife he tried to shave it off which was easier said than done as his constitution also effected his hair. Finally he used the flaming silk trap to cut it off, having the extremely sharp wire so close to his head actually made him really nervous. The worst a blade could do was cause a flesh wound if he slipped, this on the other hand would slice off half his face.
He could almost imagine it, the great hunter who faced beasts of all manners, he didn't come out unscathed from it, but the most prominent wound on his body among the many many horrific ones was a cut across his face when he made a mistake shaving. He'd never be able to live it down.
He threw out his old clothes with his long hair, there was no point to wearing it anymore as it would be even more troublesome to wash than make a new one. Luckily, one of the gifts he received was from a former tailor. A blue color long sleeved shirt, he was honestly a bit troubled in receiving such an item, it was apparently supposed to be worn under the armor of a Duke's firstborn who left for the war before the cataclysm.
He was a little late to deliver the item as the army departed a little earlier than scheduled due to the intensity of the war. Of course considering the recipient of the item, the quality was no short of astounding, in terms of durability alone the thing was probably as good as normal steel armor, and rightly so.
It was because it was actually made with monster material as well as steel. Apparently even among the ranks of Craftsmen, the higher ups required a level of cultivation. The realization didn't come to Zhao Wei at first due to his old world views, but of course Warriors of higher ranks required equipment that were also made by people as powerful as themselves else there would be no point. If a gold class warrior used a bronze class weapon, it'd probably break at the first hit.
The only difference was that the Tantra of craftsmen were usually non-aggressive. The tantra of this tailor was actually the same one as Kitsi's the mud-steel type able to soften solid objects. A gold class himself, he used the Tantra to soften the monster material slowly to the point where it became flexible, pulling it until it was needle thick and flexible before doing the same with steel and twining them together. In Zhao Wei's point of view, the level of control he required to stitch such a thing was beyond even the level of a warrior's.
Really, the thought actually intrigued him. Instead of using The volume of Tantra to overwhelm his opponents, if he could control to such a level and yet use the same speed he used for fighting, wouldn't his skills reach a ridiculous level.